Heffernan to farmers: band together over coal seam gas

POLITICAL heavyweight Bill Heffernan has called on Griffith
farmers to band together to oppose coal seam gas exploration.

The Liberal senator made a last-minute decision to personally attend a NSW
Farmers workshop discussing landholders' rights in Griffith
yesterday.

The workshop comes in response to an application before the state government
for petroleum exploration encompassing Griffith, Coleambally, Yenda, Benerembah
and more.

The rural-minded senator appealed to local farmers to recognise the threat of
coal seam gas mining and lobby the state government for more protection over
their land.

"When I chaired the senate inquiry into coal seam gas, the CSIRO told me
they didn't understand the risks of coal seam gas mining but they thought it
could take several hundreds of years to rebalance the aquifers after 30 years
of mining," Mr Heffernan said.

"I have come to tell Griffith
farmers there is very little they can do by way of protection, the only way to
deal with this threat is to bind together as a community.

"One mistake farmers in Queensland
made was to sign confidentiality agreements with the miners so they couldn't
tell their neighbours what was going on and I don't want to see that repeated
here."

Mr Heffernan said the NSW government made a shocking mistake when it failed to
afford Griffith and the MIA the protection of the gateway process - part of the
Strategic Regional Land Use Policy.

"A whole lot of the areas covered by these petroleum exploration licences
are excluded from what the state government has defined as strategic
agricultural land, which is just bureaucratic bullshit," Mr Heffernan
said.

"It's mind-boggling the MIA - which produces millions of cases of wine and
a million tonnes of rice - doesn't qualify as strategic agricultural land, it's
a most basic error by the NSW government and must be because they ran out of
time and money when they were doing the zoning."

After mayor John Dal Broi brought the mining issue to the attention of council
last week, a number of councillors shared profound concerns.

"If mining goes ahead here this town won't be worth anything, it will
poison the water and we'll drop dead like flies," Cr Anne Napoli said.

"We are a green environment and we produce food for the nation, so to
allow people to exploit this land is not on."

Council will prepare a submission for the public comment process but it must
relate specifically to the exploration process and not make mention of
potential mining in the future.

THREAT WARNING: Senator Bill Heffernan pleads with local farmers to lobby the NSW government for more protection against coal seam gas mining.